Kirrus’ Blog

Protected: A state of mind, January 2012

The wind is not your friend

Cycling home tonight, I had just left work’s place, onto a stretch  of road with no streetlights. Picture the scene, it’s just stopped bucketing it down with rain, now spitting. I’m in wet-weather gear, and it’s dark. Quite dark. My backpack has a reflective cover, and I’ve a reflectctive jacket, with a particually annoying LED flashing backlight. (I’m paranoid – shortly will have red LED flashing in my helmet.)

Got out safely, clipped my feet in fine (I now have special shoes that clip onto my pedals), accelerating towards my average 15-17mph on that particular bit of road, the wind decided to push me, hard, towards the edge of the road. A very small shallow there, with a grassy bank. Wheels in the culvert, uncontrollable de-acceleration, equals me flat across the A road, with one car passing me and another just behind it.

Promtly to the sound of car-horns telling me just how close I’d come to getting run over, I dragged myself off the road *sharpish*, and dragged my bike off as quick as I could after I was off. I’ve a couple of very minor abrasions on my ankles. Lucky. Very lucky.

Note to self. When it’s wet and windy, piss drivers off by sticking a meter off from the side. It’s far better than getting run over.

Protected: Current state of mind (contact for password)

Quick, Easy, Nice way to eat a spare chicken breast

A forum-friend provided this recipe, when I asked for suggestions for a spare chicken breast (other one went into curry.) Very yummy indeed, thanks!

Season chicken breast with salt, pepper and your favourite spice blend.

Bake or grill it. (About 30-45 minutes at 175-200 degrees C)

Once cooked let it rest and start to cool, whilst you prepare the bits to go with it.

Smear mayonnaise and mustard on two slices of bread. Slice the chicken thinly into strips. Then add lettuce leaves to the bread, the sliced up warm chicken, and top with tomato slices.

I mixed the order, adding the chicken and then the lettuce, but it still tasted nice:

Sorry about the rubbish photo. Taken on my phone.

Why I hate colds

I use an iPhone app called ‘Sleep Cycle’ to monitor my sleep patterns, and wake me whilst I’m naturally most awake, within a half hour window at the end of the night. It is really useful, and works really well, when I have a good night.

Having a cold robs me of a good night:

I really hate colds
Sleep Cycle iTunes page

Repeating mistakes

Every now and then, I forget to check my trousers for tissues before putting them through the wash. It’s not a mistake I’m likely to repeat too often, you’d think?

Once a year, give or take.

It’s so annoying! Maybe one of these days, the lesson will become permanent. Well, it wasn’t today (

Sports headphones Review

I’ve been looking for a really good set of headphones to use while doing extreme sports (Bocking) which has got to be the best test of how well the headphones stay in your ear!

I’ve tested a few different sets headphones designed specifically for sports (jogging) and ones that are not (in ear/noise isolating silicon ones.
Here’s a short review with ratings 1-5 (where 5 is best) in various categories. Scroll to the bottom to find out the overall winner!

Sennheiser Mx55 ((£15 from HMV)
Comfort 4 (can get a bit unconfortable after a few hours in)
Sound 5 (excellent sound quality)
Volume 4 (Not as loud as i’d expected, but also doesn’t leave my ears ringing after listening with my player on full volume)
Quality 4 (the snap on interchangeable covers designed to let you bling it up a bit are pointless and come off too easily. I’ve superglued one already, but at this price, who’s complaining?!)
Hold/fit 5 (they stayed in for hours while i bounced around, amazing!)

EDIT: Superglue the rubber bits on too, they fall off in pocket!

Skullcandy in ear
Comfort 4 (pretty comfortable until i took them out then found my ear holes were quite sore)
Sound 3 (good, but lacking something, and no matter of EQ tweaking could give me that…too crisp)
Volume 5 (ear blisteringly loud )
Quality 2 (poor, the metal mesh on one of them fell off after about a week, and then the speaker on that side got kind of bent in and the volume halved)
Hold/fit 2 (fall out often, not suitable for jogging/sports)

Sony Active MDR-AS20J Ear Clip Sports Headphones ~£12
now it’s been a little while since i used these headphones so forgive me if i’m a little less specific. These have got to be my second favourite since the Sennheiser MX55.
They disappeared a while back and I can’t seem to find them anymore lol.
Comfort 4
Sound 4
Quality 5 (survived being chucked into my bag with various implements until they disappeared)
Volume 4 (not as good as the in ear ones obviously, but louder than the MX55′s)
Hold/Fit 4 (the stay on, but its a bit fiddly to get them on)

Sennheiser CXII300 In ear noise isolating ~£30
These were quite expensive for me, but sounded greate and lasted ages. The hold while Bocking wasn’t too bad (it helped taping the cable to my neck with a plaster to prevent tugging).
I killed them by accidentally snagging the cable on a street sign and turning round. The cable separated at the connector.
Comfort 3 (got a bit uncomfortable after an hour or so)
Sound 5
Quality 4 (good, rubbery cable didn’t seem to kink and was easily wrapped but the rubber cable ends on the buds slid down after a good few months of kicking around in the bag)
Volume 5
Fit/hold 4 (not best suited to sports, the cable always caught on my clothes and dragged them out of my ears. Better fit than the skull candy though.)

My recommendation? Get the Sennheiser MX55. Great hold and sound quality for an amazing price. I don’t miss the volume, my hearing seems to be improving now (i think a volume rating of 5 is excessive!!).

The in ear/noise isolating ones especially the sennheiser were pretty good, but i quite like being able to have some sound from the surroundings. Even though the hold was pretty impressive for something not secured to your ear, the cable always won and ended up yoinking them out of my ears.

Edit: added comment to Senheiser Mx 55 section.

Not yet, please…

It’s official, Christmas is fast approaching. We’ve got the adverts, and after having seen the first christmasy thing a couple of months ago, now the shops are starting to put up their decoration. Still think it’s too early!

Mainly this post is a holding one, since not much happened today either. Still got the ticket open from ‘won’t listen’, just slowly talking him the issues he has with his site (more PEBKAC than anything else, but I don’t mind that as long as the user listens!).

Tickets, train ride home from the datacentre in the middle of the day, then more tickets. Pretty much sums up today.

Today, Nothing happened

Pretty much that. Today, nothing happened, had no thoughts on interesting blog posts. See, told you there’d be filler!

Tech-support. Normal normal. Tweaking config files. Restarting webservers. Nothing fun, nothing nasty

Ate the last of my toasted teacakes for lunch though

P.S. “The Cowsills – Hair” is just a strange track. My colleague suggested we listen to “The Beach Boys” on last.fm. This is one of the tracks that started playing..

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Cowsills/_/Hair

LPIC exam 101

Well, it’s arrived again. A little later today, I’ll be taking the Linux Professional Institue’s exam again. With any luck, I’ll pass this time (failed by 10 points last time ) Hopefully, I’ll be able to update this post with good news. Who knows.

I hate exams, especially these, which require rote learning. Rote learning I am rubbish at. Sit me in front of a computer with a task within my abilities, the use of man and google, and fine, I can muddle my way through. But learning all the command flags of rpm? No. Hard. Gastly, indeed. I had hoped I was done with exams when I left school. Seems I was wrong

Did I mention, I hate exams?

I passed

In less depressing non-news.. Day 5 of NaBloPoMo, and I’ve yet to falter. Let’s see what happens this weekend, when I get a wonderful couple of nights of disturbed sleep, and short ‘stuff needs fixing!’ deadlines